Issaquah PCC is 25

The Issaquah PCC is celebrating its 25^th anniversary. Join us for a special birthday bash at the store Nov. 10 (full details here)!

Issaquah was PCC’s eighth store when it opened in 1999, decorated with oversized cheese graters as hanging light fixtures and upside-down colanders covering light bulbs.  At nearly 24,000 square feet, it was nearly twice the size of the next largest store. PCC had only about 35,000 members when the Issaquah store opened, compared with more than 115,000 today. It was an exciting time for the co-op; just as Issaquah was opening, Jody Aliesan was announcing the formation of a PCC fund to preserve farmland, which now lives on as the Washington Farmland Trust.

The Issaquah store site in the Pickering Place shopping center originally featured “a small spa, a natural and traditional pharmacy, a room for food and lifestyle classes and a brick-oven pizza bar,” according to newspaper accounts at the time. One referred to its health and body care products as an “apothecary.” The Sound Consumer alerted members to everything from a new noodle bar to a “fabulous salad station.” The draw it thought would be especially welcome for members accustomed to Seattle’s smaller stores? “Ample parking.”

By 2001, the Seattle Times suggested that the Issaquah PC was “probably Exhibit No. 1 that a PCC can succeed in today’s diverse and competitive food environment.” Issaquah’s size and style were a far cry from the “granola eating” stereotype of the co-op’s early days, the article noted, but then-CEO Randy Lee told the paper that members covered a broad cross-section. His words ring true even on year 25: “The first and main commonality is that they care about the food that they eat. You go every direction from there.”